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Villages
Kinds of Villages Terms modified by Villages Selected AbstractsCogon-thatched Cottages and Iron Sheet-roofed Houses: Development in a Yao Mountain Village in Northern ThailandCULTURE, AGRICULTURE, FOOD & ENVIRONMENT, Issue 3 2001Assistant Professor Li Jian First page of article [source] Windfall and Socially Distributed Willpower: The Psychocultural Dynamics of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations in a Bengkulu VillageETHOS, Issue 1-2 2002Assistant Professor Daniel M. T. Fessler Rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) occur in myriad forms around the world. ROSCAs promote saving and make capital available. However, psychocultural factors distinct from monetary concern make both the existence of ROSCAs possible and participation in them attractive. This article analyzes the arisan, a ROSCA in Bengkulu, Sumatra. Psychocultural factors that inhibit mobility and prevent cheating make the arisan feasible. The arisan is popular because, through a process of socially distributed willpower congruent with familiar mechanisms of behavior regulation, it aids individuals in overcoming a weak ability to defer gratification. The arisan also allows individuals to sidestep prescribed sharing by exploiting the same values of reciprocity. Part of the arisan's appeal lies in its ability to create rewarding experiences by evoking both the culturally marked event of obtaining a windfall and the related thrill of gambling. This analysis demonstrates that economic behavior must be understood in the context of the culturally patterned motives that shape action. [source] Intrafamilial Transmission of Helicobacter pylori among the Population of Endemic Areas in JapanHELICOBACTER, Issue 2 2007Yayoi Fujimoto Abstract Background:,Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection is a worldwide phenomenon related to several gastrointestinal diseases. However, because many aspects concerning the route of transmission remain unclear, we performed this epidemiologic study to clarify the route of intrafamilial transmission of H. pylori. Materials and Methods:, A retrospective study was performed in three widely separate areas in Japan to investigate the prevalence of H. pylori infection. In 1993, 613 residents were tested as were 4136 in 2002, including 1447 family members of 625 families. Antibody to H. pylori (anti- H. pylori) was determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Results:, In 2002, the age-adjusted anti- H. pylori prevalence in Hoshino Village (67.5%) was significantly higher than in Kasuya Town (55.0%) and in Ishigaki City (54.7%) (p < .0001, p = .0039, respectively). The age-adjusted anti- H. pylori prevalence of Ishigaki City significantly decreased from 1993 (68.4%) to 2002 (52.5%), showing an age cohort effect. However, the prevalence did not significantly differ in children aged 0,6 years of Ishigaki City between 1993 (9.6%) and 2002 (10.3%). A familial analysis in 2002 demonstrated that the prevalence of anti- H. pylori was significantly higher in children with anti- H. pylori -positive (21.6%, 22 of 102) than with -negative mothers (3.2%, 3 of 95) (p < .0001, by Mantel,Haenszel test), whereas there was no significant difference between children with anti- H. pylori -positive and -negative fathers. Moreover, the prevalence was significantly higher in wives with anti- H. pylori -positive (64.0%, 208 of 325) than with -negative husbands (46.5%, 80 of 172) (p = .0071, by Mantel,Haenszel test) and in husbands with anti- H. pylori -positive (72.2%, 208 of 288) than with -negative wives (56.0%, 117 of 209) (p = .0106, by Mantel,Haenszel test). Conclusions:, In the last decade, H. pylori infection decreased in the general population of Japan by improvement of general hygiene conditions, but did not differ in young children, most likely because of mother-to-child transmission. [source] The Functions of Participation in a Village-Based Health Pre-Payment Scheme: What Can Participation Actually Do?IDS BULLETIN, Issue 1 2000Andreas Wilkes Summary This article analyses micro-level interactions in one case study to argue that participation does not necessarily lead to accountability. The case study covers the process of establishment, implementation and evaluation of a village-based health pre-payment scheme in a poor village in China. Judged on widely used criteria, the scheme and evaluation activities represent examples of ,high degrees of community participation'. However, analysis of the process points to the influence that different interests, different channels for voicing interests, and unequal power relations have in determining the outcome of decision-making processes. [source] The Global Financial Crisis and Migrant Workers in China: ,There is No Future as a Labourer; Returning to the Village has No Meaning'INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2010KAM WING CHAN Abstract This essay examines the impact of the global financial crisis on rural migrant labour in China, with a focus on unemployment. It illustrates the interaction of global and China-specific processes in the context of the worldwide recession. The essay first summarizes China's unique socio-economic system and the mechanisms that have created a system of ,rural migrant labour' and ,super-cheapened' it to help make China the ,world's factory'. The main part of the essay examines the unemployment situation for migrants in late 2008 and the first half of 2009, and the dislocations and problems migrant labourers are facing. The China story is complex but interesting, not only for its rather complicated lexicon and statistics that often confuse outside observers, but also for its distinctive system of exploiting the rural population and internal migrant labour. This system makes the impact of the global crisis on migrant labourers, which are at the bottom of the global supply chain, all the more apparent. The last part of this essay analyses recent governmental fiscal-stimulus policies and measures as well as their impact on rural migrant labour, making some broader observations and linking the crisis to China's model of development. Résumé Ce texte examine l'impact de la crise financière mondiale sur la main-d',uvre migrante rurale chinoise en s'intéressant notamment au chômage. Il illustre l'interaction des processus planétaires et nationaux dans le cadre de la récession mondiale. Une synthèse présente d'abord le régime socio-économique unique du pays, ainsi que les mécanismes qui ont créé un système de ,main-d',uvre migrante rurale' tout en ,hyper-dépréciant' ces travailleurs afin de faire de la Chine ,l'usine du monde'. L'étude centrale porte sur le chômage des migrants entre la fin 2008 et le premier semestre 2009, ainsi que sur les bouleversements et problèmes que rencontrent les ouvriers migrants. L'histoire chinoise est complexe mais intéressante, non seulement à cause d'un vocabulaire et de statistiques compliqués qui déroutent souvent les observateurs extérieurs, mais aussi par son système spécifique d'exploitation de la population rurale et de la main-d',uvre migrante. Ce système renforce d'autant plus l'impact de la crise mondiale sur les ouvriers migrants, lesquels se trouvent tout en bas de la chaîne d'approvisionnement mondial. En revenant sur les récentes politiques et mesures d'incitation fiscale du gouvernement et sur leurs conséquences pour la main-d',uvre migrante rurale, la dernière partie élargit le champ des observations et relie la crise au modèle de développement chinois. [source] Guest editorial: It Takes a Village to Heal a WoundINTERNATIONAL WOUND JOURNAL, Issue 4 2006Elizabeth A. Ayello No abstract is available for this article. [source] Public Action, Agrarian Change and the Standard of Living of Agricultural Workers: A Study of a Village in KeralaJOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, Issue 3 2006R. RAMAKUMAR This article describes and analyses the ways in which public action in the State of Kerala in India helped to transform the standard of living of hired workers in agriculture. Specifically, the article analyses the extent of land and asset ownership, access to credit, access to social security schemes and food distribution systems and the conditions of housing and sanitation of households participating in agricultural wage work. The article is based as a case study of Morazha desam in the Malabar region of Kerala, which had one of the most oppressive agrarian systems in India before 1956,57. In 1955, another economist had studied Morazha desam; this study was conducted before one of the most important interventions through public action , land reform , took place in Malabar. The 1955 study had characterized the conditions of life of agricultural workers as ,wretched in the extreme'. The present article documents the significant transformation in the quality of life that took place in Morazha after 1955, through a weakening of the factors that led to ,wretched' conditions of life in the earlier period. The destruction of traditional agrarian power by the state through land reform was the most critical step in this process. [source] Land and Social Change in a Tanzanian Village 2: Kinyanambo in the 1990sJOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, Issue 4 2005ELIZABETH DALEY First page of article [source] Land and Social Change in a Tanzanian Village 1: Kinyanambo, 1920s,1990JOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, Issue 3 2005Elizabeth Daley This article (in two parts) traces the historical development of land tenure in Kinyanambo village, Mufindi District, Tanzania. It suggests a gradual commoditization of land and the evolution of a predominantly individualized land market, processes influenced by the long-term commoditization of agriculture and social reproduction more generally. Local land tenure practices evolved more or less independently of national land tenure policy until 1974, when villagization altered the evolutionary path of local land tenure, marking a fundamental turning point in people's understandings of their land rights. Together with the simultaneous establishment of Mafinga town, it created conditions for the rapid and more spatially concentrated growth of the local population, for urbanization, and for associated changes in livelihoods, land use, and relations between people and land. As a result, and following the economic reforms of the current period of structural adjustment and liberalization, by 2000 Kinyanambo had a deep-rooted, widespread and socially legitimate market in land. [source] The Cord Keepers: Khipus and Cultural Life in a Peruvian VillageJOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN & CARIBBEAN ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2005Shane Greene [source] Maternal Mortality in the Global VillageJOURNAL OF OBSTETRIC, GYNECOLOGIC & NEONATAL NURSING, Issue 2 2004Nancy K. Lowe Editor No abstract is available for this article. [source] Effect of light source and time on the polymerization of resin cement through ceramic veneersJOURNAL OF PROSTHODONTICS, Issue 3 2001Flavio H. Rasetto Odont Purpose The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of 3 different light sources to polymerize a light curing resin cement beneath 3 types of porcelain veneer materials. Materials and Methods A conventional halogen light, a plasma arc light, and a high intensity halogen light were used to polymerize resin cement (Variolink II; Ivoclar North America Inc, Amherst, NY) through disks of veneer materials. Equal diameter and thickness disks of feldspathic porcelain (Ceramco II; Ceramco Inc, Burlington, NJ), pressable ceramic (IPS Empress; Ivoclar North America Inc), and aluminous porcelain (Vitadur Alpha; Vident Inc, Brea, CA) were used as an interface between the curing light tips and the light polymerized resin cement. The resin cement/veneer combinations were exposed to 4 different photopolymerization time protocols of 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, and 20 seconds for high intensity light units (Apollo 95E [Dental Medical Diagnostic Systems Inc, Westlake Village, CA] and Kreativ 2000 [Kreativ Inc, San Diego, CA]), and 20 seconds, 40 seconds, 60 seconds, and 80 seconds for conventional halogen light (Optilux; Demetron Research Inc, Danbury, CT). A surface hardness test (Knoop indenter) was used to determine the level of photopolymerization of the resin through the ceramic materials with each of the light sources. The data were analyzed by one-way analysis of variance and a post-hoc Scheffe test (p < .05). Results The data indicates that the Variolink II Knoop Hardness Number values vary with the light source, the veneer material, and the polymerization time. For a given light and veneer material, Knoop Hardness Number increases with longer polymerization times. The Kreativ light showed statistically significant differences (p < .05) between all test polymerization times. Use of this light required a polymerization time of greater than 20 seconds to reach maximum resin cement hardness. For samples polymerized with the Apollo light, there were statistically significant (p < .05) differences in surface hardness between samples polymerized at all times, except for the 15-second and 20-second times. Samples polymerized with the halogen light showed no statistically significant (p < .05) differences in hardness between polymerization times of 60 seconds and 80 seconds. Conclusions High intensity curing lights achieve adequate polymerization of resin cements through veneers in a markedly shorter time period than the conventional halogen light. However, the data in this report indicate that a minimum exposure time of 15 seconds with the Kreativ light and 10 seconds with the Apollo 95E light should be used to polymerize the Variolink II resin, regardless of the composition of the veneer. Conventional halogen lights required a correspondingly greater polymerization time of 60 seconds. [source] Does It Take a Village?LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 4 2006Fear of Crime in Latin America, Policing Strategies ABSTRACT How can policymakers reduce public fear of crime in Latin America? This study compares the effectiveness of "zero tolerance" and community-based policing strategies in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. At the micro level, it assesses the links between fear of crime and social identity characteristics, contextual factors, the media, community participation, and other insecurities. It finds that citizens' economic, political, and social insecurities are the main determinants of their fear of crime. At the macro level, the study compares levels of public insecurity and finds that cities that employ community-based strategies to fight crime register lower levels of public fear of crime. [source] Curing and Healing: Medical Anthropology in Global Perspective; Everyday Spirits and Medical Interventions: Ethnographic and Historical Notes on Therapeutic Conventions in Zanzibar Town; Some Spirits Heal, Others Only Dance: A Journey into Human Selfhood in an African Village; The Straight Path of the Spirit: Ancestral Wisdom and Healing Traditions in Fiji; Healing Makes Our Hearts Happy: Spirituality and Cultural Transformations among the Ju!'hoansiMEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2001Helle Samuelsen Curing and Healing: Medical Anthropology in Global Perspective. Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1999. vii+224 pp. Everyday Spirits and Medical Interventions: Ethnographic and Historical Notes on Therapeutic Conventions in Zanzibar Town. Tapio Nisula. Saarijanjarvi: Transactions of the Finnish Anthropological Society 43,1999. 321 pp. Some Spirits Heal, Others Only Dance:. Journey into Human Selfhood in an African Village. Roy Willis with K. B. S. Chisanga. H. M. K. Sikazwe. Kapembwa B. Sikazwe. and Sylvia Nanyangwe .Oxford: Berg, 1999. xii. 220pp. The Straight Path of the Spirit: Ancestral Wisdom and Healing Traditions in Fiji. Richard Katz. Rochester, VT. Park Street Press, 1999.413 pp. Healing Makes Our Hearts Happy: Spirituality and Cultural Transformations among the Ju!'hoansi. Richard Katz. Megan Biesele. and Verna St. Denis. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1997. xxv. 213 pp. [source] Berber Culture on the World Stage: From Village to VideoAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 2 2007DEBORAH KAPCHAN Berber Culture on the World Stage: From Village to Video. Jane E. Goodman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. 239 pp. [source] Collection and Context in a Cameroonian VillageMUSEUM INTERNATIONAL, Issue 3 2007Steven Nelson [source] Domesticating Revolution: From Socialist Reform to Ambivalent Transition in a Bulgarian VillageAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 3 2002Tim Pilbrow Domesticating Revolution: From Socialist Reform to Ambivalent Transition in. Bulgarian Village. Gerald W. Creed. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. 304 pp. [source] Virtual Shop Clusters: A New Layout Concept for a Ship Repair and Maintenance FacilityNAVAL ENGINEERS JOURNAL, Issue 2 2008BRIAN MAYER Organic ship maintenance facilities and depots of the Navy are mostly organized as trade-specific shops rather than by product (or process) families. For example, welders are in the weld shop, machinists are in the machine shop, pipe-fitters are in the pipe shop, etc. There is a belief that this guild-type organizational structure is what enables a repair facility to do almost anything, albeit at the cost of moving product all over the "factory." This skill-based organizational structure is identical to the functional (or department) layout that is preferred by most jobshops in the commercial manufacturing sectors. But, any company that has successfully implemented Lean Thinking has almost always replaced a Functional (or Process Village) Layout by a Cellular Layout. At the Navy's Southeast Regional Maintenance Center (SERMC), a typical repair job must visit multiple shops that pass work back and forth between them. For example, a pipe job may be sent by the pipe shop to the machine shop for re-threading, then routed to the weld shop where it is welded to a frame, after which the welded sub-assembly returns to the pipe shop for inspection and final assembly. Thereby, significant delays and operational wastes occur because people have to walk between the shops, discuss matters at daily production meetings, and e-mail/phone each other to make sure that their schedules match. If activities are not completed as per schedule, the jobs get further delayed because they queue at the shops, waiting to be served. This lack of detailed (and accurate) planning and scheduling, combined with poor schedule visibility and shop floor control, is the curse of the Functional Layout that currently exists at SERMC. This paper will describe a pilot project to assess the feasibility of cellular manufacturing at SERMC. The fundamental hypothesis that was tested is that even in a repair and maintenance facility there could exist several families of repair jobs where jobs grouped into a family require similar combinations of processes, equipment, materials, etc. that can be provided by a small group of shops. In fact, several potential families of repair jobs, and the appropriate cluster of shops for each family of repair jobs, were identified using the Production Flow Analysis and Simplification Toolkit (PFAST) software. Based on these results, it was decided to implement a shop cluster (or focused factory, or repair cell) to complete any repair jobs done by the dive shop. It was recommended that the dive shop be merged with a few other shops, and be provided the necessary tools, cross-trained personnel, equipment, and other support systems to become an autonomous multi-function shop. Simulation using the SimCAD software from CreateAsoft Inc. (http://www.createasof.com) was used to verify the results expected from making the proposed changes. The primary analysis was intended to evaluate the benefits of implementing a focused factory in the dive shop. The secondary analysis was intended to evaluate the advantages of implementing a virtual shop cluster (or focused factory, or repair cell) in any ship repair facility like SERMC. The simulation results showed that implementing either physical cells or virtual cells based on the different families of repair jobs identified by PFAST could improve job turnaround times at any Navy ship repair facility like SERMC. Both the types of delays as well as the time values of these delays differed significantly across the existing and alternative shop configurations that were proposed. [source] Some Spirits Heal, Others Only Dance: A Journey into Human Selfhood in an African Village; Everyday Spirits and Medical Interventions: Ethnographic and Historical Notes on Therapeutic Conventions in Zanzibar TownAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 2 2001Judy Rosenthal Some Spirits Heal, Others Only Dance:. Journey into Human Selfhood in an African Village. Roy Willis. New York: Berg, 1999. 220 pp. Everyday Spirits and Medical Interventions: Ethnographic and Historical Notes on Therapeutic Conventions in Zanzibar Town. Tapio Nisula. Helsinki, Finland: The Finnish Anthropological Society, 1999. 321 pp. [source] Solovyovo: The Story of Memory in a Russian Village by Margaret PaxsonAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 3 2009JENNIFER PATICO No abstract is available for this article. [source] At the Margins of Death: Ritual Space and the Politics of Location in an Indo-Himalayan Border VillageAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 3 2001Ravina Aggarwal I base this article on an event that transpired during a funeral ceremony in the village of Achinathang in Ladakh, India. This incident, which coincided with a period of interreligious conflicts between Muslim and Buddhist communities, led me to question the manner in which margins become sites for the definition and contestation of citizenship and power. Here, I analyze the construction of margins in multiple contexts: in negotiating boundaries between death and rebirth, in coping with and challenging the control exerted by town-based political reform movements over rural space, and finally, in locating the position of the ethnographer in histories and spaces of domination. [death rituals, social space, politics of location, Buddhism, South Asia] [source] Some Spirits Heal, Others Only Dance: A Journey into Human Selfhood in an African VillageAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 1 2001Jennifer Nourse Some Spirits Heal, Others Only Dance:. Journey into Human Selfhood in an African Village. Roy Willis. Oxford: Berg, 1999. viii. 220 pp., maps, photographs, illustrations, appendix, bibliography, glossary, index. [source] Pocket Books to Global Beat: Andrei Voznesensky, Kazuko Shiraishi, Michael HorovitzORBIS LITERARUM, Issue 3 2004A. Robert Lee The Beat Movement has long been thought to centre only as an American cultural phenomenon and in key names like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso, and with William Burroughs as a presiding dark mentor. This essay argues for a far wider contextual understanding. It looks to Beat currents in the African American poetry of LeRoi Jones/Imamu Baraka, Ted Joans and Bob Kaufman, a circuit of Beat-influenced women like Diane Di Prima and Anne Waldman, and a US multicultural arena to include Oscar Zeta Acosta and Maxine Hong Kingston. Most of all it analyses the Beat impact beyond America in three prime names: Andrei Voznesensky as leading 1960s,1970s Russian dissident poet, Kazuko Shiraishi as longtime vintage Tokyoite jazz-and-poetry ,bad girl', and Michael Horovitz as British counter-culture voice. In these three Beat acquires a global reach, a force of vision, a poetics, well beyond Greenwich Village or City Lights Bookshop, San Francisco. It also links the local, miniaturist Pocket Poets series established by Ferlinghetti with his own Pictures of a Gone World (1955) to Beat writings which can best be thought at once national and transnational. Given this larger cultural context, the essay analyzes a relevant body of verse by Vosnesensky, Shiraishi and Horovitz, with particular attention given to vision, image, the shaping language each poet gives to Beat heritage inaugurated far from their own beginnings. [source] Patterns in ontogeny of human trabecular bone from SunWatch Village in the Prehistoric Ohio Valley: General features of microarchitectural changeAMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 3 2009James H. Gosman Abstract Although adult skeletal morphological variation is best understood within the framework of age-related processes, relatively little research has been directed towards the structure of and variation in trabecular bone during ontogeny. We report here new quantitative and structural data on trabecular bone microarchitecture in the proximal tibia during growth and development, as demonstrated in a subadult archaeological skeletal sample from the Late Prehistoric Ohio Valley. These data characterize the temporal sequence and variation in trabecular bone structure and structural parameters during ontogeny as related to the acquisition of normal functional activities and changing body mass. The skeletal sample from the Fort Ancient Period site of SunWatch Village is composed of 33 subadult and three young adult proximal tibiae. Nondestructive microCT scanning of the proximal metaphyseal and epiphyseal tibia captures the microarchitectural trabecular structure, allowing quantitative structural analyses measuring bone volume fraction, degree of anisotropy, trabecular thickness, and trabecular number. The microCT resolution effects on structural parameters were analyzed. Bone volume fraction and degree of anisotropy are highest at birth, decreasing to low values at 1 year of age, and then gradually increasing to the adult range around 6,8 years of age. Trabecular number is highest at birth and lowest at skeletal maturity; trabecular thickness is lowest at birth and highest at skeletal maturity. The results of this study highlight the dynamic sequential relationships between growth/development, general functional activities, and trabecular distribution and architecture, providing a reference for comparative studies. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2009. © 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Ethics in the Global Village: Moral Insights for a Post 9-11 USA , By Jack A. HillRELIGIOUS STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 2 2009Pamela K. Brubaker No abstract is available for this article. [source] Tradisi and Moderen, Village and State: Emergent Tensions in a Sasak Health QuestTHE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 3 2000Cynthia Hunter On Lombok island, in the province of West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, indigenous medicine and biomedicine coexist. Nevertheless, biomedicine, a product of modernity and the development of the state has been superimposed on village life along with other state institutions such as education. In this paper I analyse the processes involved in Sasak villagers' quest for health. Operating within various and sometimes overlapping social fields and conflicting discourses, villagers utilise both local indigenous practices as well as the Indonesian national health system in their quest. Because local or ordinary knowledge is a rich resource for interpretation, I describe the health quest through the participant individuals: family members, neighbours, doctors and nursing personnel involved. The subjectivity of the individual participants contributes to the intricate unfolding of health seeking quests to expose the various tensions which emerge between tradition (tradisi [I]) and modernity (moderen [I]) and between state and village. [source] Guest Editor's Epilogue Global Village: Divergence or Convergence?THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN CULTURE, Issue 2 2004Marshall Fishwick First page of article [source] It Takes a VillageTHE LARYNGOSCOPE, Issue 12 2008Jonas T. Johnson MD Editor No abstract is available for this article. [source] Moroccan Households in the World Economy: Labor and Inequality in a Berber Village.ANTHROPOLOGY OF WORK REVIEW, Issue 3 2009By David Crawford No abstract is available for this article. [source] Front and Back Covers, Volume 23, Number 5.ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 5 2007Ocotober 200 Front and back covers caption, volume 23 issue 5 Front cover The front cover illustrates Julie J. Taylor's article on the outcome of the San people's court case against the Botswana government. The photo shows Roy Sesana, leader of the San organization First People of the Kalahari and chief appellant in the case, with Gordon Bennett, the San group's lawyer, at the start of the case in July 2004. In the course of the last century, the San or Bushmen of southern Africa became possibly the most studied indigenous group in the world. In addition to suffering land dispossession and violence during the colonial period, their image in the West has long been that of exotic and innocent ,Other', fuelled over time by the work of scientists, anthropologists and filmmakers among others. In recent years the San have become part of wider debates about indigeneity, poverty and development, often in relation to land rights. Many San have formed their own representative institutions and have also entered into relationships with national and international NGOs to campaign for their rights as an indigenous minority. From 2004, San claims to land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana drew unprecedented attention in the international media, due in part to the efforts of local NGOs and the British-based advocacy group Survival International. After protracted court proceedings and much controversy, the case finally came to an end in late 2006. At first sight the outcome appeared to offer victory to San applicants, but matters in the Central Kalahari are far from resolved, raising questions about the role of advocacy groups and the fate of marginalized San groups elsewhere. Back cover (IM)PERSONAL MONEY Roboti of Giribwa Village, Trobriand Islands (above) is seen wearing the armshell Nanoula and the necklace Kasanai. Both have been circulating in the kula for at least a century and were already famous when Malinowski saw them. He was sure that these valuables were not money because they were not an impersonal medium of exchange, but Marcel Mauss, in a long footnote to The gift, wrote: ,On this reasoning there has only been money when precious things have been really made into currency , namely have been inscribed and impersonalised, and detached from any relationship with any legal entity, whether collective or individual, other than the state that mints them, One only defines in this way a second type of money , our own.' This exchange was in some ways the high point of economic anthropology. The world of national currencies issued and controlled by states and banks must now come to terms with innumerable virtual instruments such as those seen flashing on the screens of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (below). But, as the current ,sub-prime mortgage' crisis shows, these anonymous money instruments are still closely linked to personal credit. The challenge facing anthropologists today is to renew the legacy of Mauss and Malinowski in ways that illuminate such matters of universal practical concern. In this issue, Keith Hart argues that money, like society itself, is and always has been both personal and impersonal. A pragmatic anthropology should aim to show that the numbers on people's financial statements constitute a way of summarizing their relations with society at a given time. The next step is to explain how these numbers might serve in building a viable personal economy. When we are able to take responsibility for our own economic actions, we will understand better the social forces impinging on our lives. Then it will become more obvious how and why ruling institutions need to be reformed for all our sakes. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||